"Do you love him?"
"No. I feel a lot of affection for him. And I'd die defending him. My feelings for him ... Chris, ambivalent just doesn't say it. Maybe I do love him." She sighed again. "But Adam is not tearing me apart. I made my peace with him, and with our joint destiny, and I will be a good mother."
"I never doubted it."
She frowned at him, and rubbed her hand through her hair.
"I don't get it, then."
"Robin, I never intended to rescue him, because I never imagined he needed it." His face darkened for a moment. "I'll admit I worry about Nova."
"She almost killed him herself."
"That doesn't surprise me. She's a lot like you were at her age."
"I was meaner. The difference between me and her is I would have succeeded in killing him, and she didn't. And the reason she didn't is that she really didn't want to. She picked a time when I would have to catch her. She was acting out her pain, and seeing if I really would stop her."
"Do you think he is safe from her now?"
"Utterly. She gave her word. And you remember how important an oath was to me? Well, I was positively wishy-washy compared to her." She reached for the candle in the center of the table and moved it to one side. "Maybe you could tell me why you still want him."
"Because I'm his father." He took a deep breath. "I'm working from ignorance. I don't know what a family is like in the Coven. I don't know how it works with only women around. Do you marry? Does the child have two parents?"
Robin thought about it for a while, then grimaced.
"I talked to Gaby about some of this, a long time ago, and she told me about heterosexual customs. I finally decided the two lifestyles aren't that different. About thirty or forty percent of us pair-bond and make it work. Most of the rest of us try to make a life commitment, but it falls apart in a few years. About ten percent separate sex life and family life completely, have casual or serial lovers and leave it at that."
"Single parents," Chris said. "The divorce rate where I grew up was about seventy-five percent. But I'm talking about my upbringing, my feelings of ... what is right and wrong. And that tells me a father has a responsibility to his children."
"What about Nova? She's yours, too."
"I was afraid you'd ask me that. She's no longer a child. But she's still a part of me, and I will do right by her."
Robin laughed.
"You shouldn't grit your teeth so hard," she said. "It makes me wonder if you really mean it."
"It won't be easy, I'll admit that."
"Don't worry. She's a lot of things, but easy to like isn't one of them. But leaving that aside for a minute, and tabling the notion of you 'doing what's right' for Nova, whatever that may be ... you still haven't told me why you want Adam. Just because you're his father?"
Chris spread his hands, looked at them there on the table-big, work-roughened, and ineffectual.
"I don't know if I can." He realized he was very close to tears. "I've been bothered... I have ... doubts." He gestured toward his ears, half-hidden in his long hair. They were long and pointed. "I'm changing. I asked for it, and I want it ... I think. It's a little late to go back. Me and Valiha... oh, God, I can't get into that now. I can't begin to tell you about that yet."
He put his face in his hands and wept. There seemed no way to make her understand.
He didn't know how long he cried. When he looked up, she was still looking at him curiously. She gave him a small smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. He wiped his eyes.
"I feel cheated. I had Serpent and I love him dearly. I love Titanides. I'm going to be one some day."
"When?"
"That's part of my doubts. The process is mysterious. It's taking a long time, and it's starting to be painful. I suppose I could stop now, and be forever stuck between human and Titanide.
"See, Robin... Titanides are not human. They're better and they're worse, and they're similar and they're different, but they aren't human. Ninety-nine percent of me wants to be one so ... so I can't hurt again the way I hurt for such a long time. So I can understand Valiha, so maybe I can explain to her why I did the things I did. But that nagging one percent is scared to death to stop being human."
"So you're the one who's being torn apart."
"I guess that sums it up."
"He's your link to being human."
"Yes. And I'm his father, no matter how roundabout it was."
Robin got up and walked once more to the wall. Chris took the candle and followed her. He held it high as she gently touched the hammered copper.
"I like this," she said.
"Thank you."
"I didn't think I would at first, but it grows on you." She gently traced the outline of the copper Robin, moving her finger along the line of the pregnant belly. She turned to him.
"Why did you make me pregnant in this?"
"I don't know. It wasn't a conscious decision."
"And you left off ... " She put her hands on her own abdomen, over the place where there had been a hideous tattoo, a monstrous, defiant, and despairing graffito scrawled on her own body by a proud child. The fountain had taken it away. It was as though it had never existed.
"Take him, then," she said.
For a moment Chris could not believe he had heard her right.
"Thank you," he said.
"You look like you didn't expect to convince me."
"I didn't. What changed your mind?"
One corner of her mouth curled in amusement.
"You have forgotten a lot about me. I made up my mind about a half second after you asked me. Then I had to hear your reason before I knew if I was just trying to take the easy way out."
Chris was so elated that he picked her up as easily as if she were a child and kissed her, as she laughed and pretended to fight him off.
They were still laughing when the sound of the scream reached them. It went right past the conscious part of Chris's mind, directly to something so basic as to be a reflex action, and he was sprinting for the door long before he knew who had screamed.
NINE
Rocky and Valiha were two kilometers from Tuxedo Junction, in one of the few flat, open pieces of land in that neighborhood, pulling a plow like the draft animals they most definitely were not. The comparison would not have bothered them. A Titanide farmer simply walked in front of the plow, not behind it.
Titanides were unfailingly honest and square-in the sense of a square deal. They paid debts. They would not think of accepting shelter or food without doing something in return. They also knew how to combine the payment of a debt with legitimate self-interest. Rocky and Valiha liked to visit the Junction, liked to stay with Chris in his fanciful aerie, and liked to eat well. There were certain items that did not flourish in a Gaean jungle, that would do well only in light, on flat land, and in the absence of competition. Hence the plowing. Chris could not have done it himself, and when it was done he would be able to grow more crops and set a better table. Everything balanced out nicely.
They had done about two acres. The fresh-turned soil smelled good to Rocky. It was good to exert oneself, to feel ones hooves dig the ground, to hear the creaking of the harness, to see the rich brown dirt steaming from sub-Gaean heat. It was good to rub haunches with Valiha. Yellow had always been a favorite color to him, and the Madrigals were ever yellow.
He had not known her long. That is, he had known about her almost since his birth, as she had gone on that terrible journey with the Captain, famous in legend and song. He had known her son, Serpent, for many myriarevs. But he had begun to know Valiha as a friend only about seven kilorevs ago.
Over the last kilorev he had begun to love her. This was a surprise to him. Titanides could be as quirky as the next intelligent species, and Rocky had a thing about Aeolian Solos. He tended not to like them. He knew it was illogical, since it was the single parent of the Solo who had the egotism to wish to birth a genetically identical copy of herself without help from any other Titanide. The child was as blameless as any child ... yet, if she was a copy, it stood to reason she would have her mother's egotism.